to see and enter the kingdom is to find yourself in a relationship that is open and closed, individual and relational, and will and spirit. Because this kingdom is constituted as a relationship, you can only enter it in humility (not by status or power),

Heidegger suggests that the wake-up call of anxiety might be how we learn to hear “the Appeal” that comes from beyond us, a transcendence calling us to something—calling us to ourselves.

it is important to recognize that there was no place to go where people’s attention and practices were not focused on God. There was no holiday from the grind of prayer, confession, and absolution (except a few church-sanctioned carnivals). And everything was everyone’s business, because everyone was playing the same song. You had no right to priva

This is the ritual; it’s just that someone else performs it. So be it: the mother as monastic, a quiet Benedictine of the everyday praying for the world that forgets her, keeping a fire alive for the future when the gleam of transgression is dulled and the hubris of our enlightenment wears out.